


Observational

by Leamas



Category: Declare - Tim Powers
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, canon compliant creepy things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: Elena brings home the lone survivor of a shell that landed too near his car. After all, she can't just leave him.





	Observational

**Author's Note:**

> Technically a slight AU -- Elena left Madrid for Paris in '36, and the shell Philby survived happened in '37. But oh, well, the things we overlook for a good story!

Elena, at thirteen years old, took the front of the man’s green jacket and tried to tug it open. He stopped her, pulling away and using his arms to shield himself. He held the front of it closed over his chest. His arms made a boundary she knew she wouldn’t be able to pass, for although he was thin he was in shock, having just survived a shell landing on his car, and that always made people stronger. She had already decided that past pulling him home with her, through the streets, she wouldn’t push him; she didn’t want him to lash out while she tried to help him.

She showed him her back and turned to the window, fiddling with the curtains for a moment to ensure they were sealed tight, so no one from outside could look in and see them together. It was something to do while she gave him space. She found it unlikely that he could watch her, being in the state he was, but her nerves stayed with her and she thought about her training. Her training would have her look busy rather than be seen gawking.

When she looked back to him, he was still standing. His arms were still over his chest, but he was looking at her now. He frowned when she caught him.

“Take off your shoes,” Elena said.

To her surprise, he obliged.

“And your trousers,” she continued. “I’ll give you something else to wear, until you leave.”

Elena left him alone while she went to another room and found someone else’s trousers to borrow. They would, perhaps, be too small for this man, but if that was the case then there was simply nothing for it; she couldn’t leave him sitting in a pair of trousers spattered with blood and pieces of flesh. Even if she could get past the smell – which she could; experience told her so – it would be wrong to leave him wearing pieces of men who had likely been his friends.

Elena left the trousers on the floor beside him and hurriedly took his dirty ones away. She rinsed them in the sink, scrubbing the worst of the blood and flesh away, and then left them to hang in the kitchen. Looking at it, Elena’s face creased; she’d have some explaining to do when the couple pretending to be her parents returned home, but hopefully the man would be gone by then.

She was ready to defend her decision to bring him home, if necessary; he was injured, and she couldn’t leave him there. She’d made up her mind that she’d take whatever consequences where warranted by the time she took him by the wrist and led him away from the wreckage that had been his car.

He was watching the door when she returned, and although he still said nothing Elena knew he was truly looking at her now, perhaps seeing for the first time.

“You can have your trousers when you leave in the morning,” she said, “and your shoes. For now you need sleep. Have you eaten?”

He shook his head. “But d-d-don’t w-waste an _nny_ food on m-me.” His accent was English, but Elena could have guessed that was what he was just from looking at his face.

“You’re sure?”

“P-positive.”

Elena shook her head, perhaps in disgust, that someone would turn down such an offer for food, or perhaps in envy that he could afford to.

She waved him through to the room that was her bedroom. Pushed against the wall was a cot, with a blanket. There was nothing incriminating immediately visible, but as he followed her into the room she became suddenly conscious of how exposed her radio equipment was, even though it was put away. Having him in the house was a security risk.

But what was she to do? Leave him? She could still see how lost he looked, stumbling away from the shelled car as blood poured down his face, all while still unable to look away from it.

He hadn’t said anything when he led him away from the car. As she led him on a detour home, nervously tapping her steps out on the pavement in time with her heartbeat for her own comfort, Elena had realised she could have led him anywhere. Had he paid any attention to where she led him? She couldn’t be sure; the vacant look in his eyes left him unreadable to her. Most people she’s seen who look like this didn’t remember much afterwards. It was kinder, Elena thought. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t ever remember what happened in the car.

Now, he still looked lost, and out of place as he stood in her bedroom.

“Lay down,” she instructed. He sat on the cot, and again she reached for his jacket. This time, instead of pulling inwards on himself, he pushed her away. Blood was dried on the fabric of the green coat; up close she saw the inside was lined with red fur. It, and the man himself, smelled like smoke.

“You’ll be more comfortable if you let me take that,” Elena assured him. “You can have it back tomorrow.”

“Th-thank you f-for your hospitality,” he said, “b-b-but I th-think I’d r-rather k-k-keep this. For tonight.”

Then he wrapped his arms over himself again, defensively.

Elena sighed, irritated; but ultimately it didn’t matter.

“Okay,” she said. “But try to sleep. We can’t keep you here for long, but you can stay for the night.”

“W-we,” he repeated. “Th-there w-won’t be anyone who will m-mind that, that I’m here, w-will there?”

Elena shook her head.

“You w-won’t be in trouble?”

“No,” she said. “If they come back before you leave, I’ll explain why you’re here. They’ll understand.” She gave him a knowing look, and the look he returned it with was equally conspiratorial; she hadn’t even realised that was what she meant to imply, but of course it was. “Try to sleep, if you can.”

In the end, she left him in her bedroom and sat in the main room, listening to the sounds outside. The flat felt unnaturally full with the presence of a stranger, and her heart still rushed in her chest. Elena’s ears rang from where she shell had fallen, and when she closed her eyes for too long the pinpricks of lights on the backs of her eyelids rearranged themselves in the shape of the burning car, and the smell hit her again. What did that man in the other room see? She dreaded to think. Elena wrapped her arms over herself and pulled her knees up to her chest, making herself smaller in the chair. She should really be trying to sleep, but knew it wouldn’t be possible as long as there was a stranger in the house.

Had it been safe to bring him back? She had certainly thought so at the time, but now she found herself thinking of his blue eyes, and how they’d looked up at her from the cot in the corner of her room. It reminded her of a cat cornered in an alleyway, except Elena felt cornered instead. She had no reason to feel this way; it was he who was injured, not her. Really, he should feel more uncomfortable than she. He was in unfamiliar territory, and had no reason to trust her. Nonetheless, the feeling stuck. Thinking about him, she could feel his cold blue eyes settling on her.

She also felt his wrist, warm, beneath his fingertips, and his pulse as she led him through the streets of Madrid.

Elena had thought he’d been hurt worse when she first saw him, with how the blood poured down his face and gathered at his chin, before dripping onto his green fur-lined coat; now, she thought it a miracle that he wasn’t – if she believed in miracles. The odds that he could walk away so uninjured when the other three in the car were dead seemed impossible.

She didn’t know when she dozed off, but she must have, for she woke to a sudden tension gripping her. All her body ached from how she sat, but it was alert as well, tense and ready to run. No sound had woken her, she was certain, and she would have heard if the front door had unlocked, or if anyone had been on the landing outside the flat. There was nothing; she was certain of it. The only thing out of place had been the man, now asleep in her bedroom.

At the memory of him she was gripped by a sudden dread; she certainly hoped he was still asleep.

Uncurling herself, Elena crossed the room and edged nearer to the bedroom, hesitating, but then slowly pushing open the door to peer inside. It was still dark, with the curtains drawn tight. The light from the hallway chased her inside, stretching her shadow across the floor and to the bed.

The English man lay on his back, his face hidden in the shadows. For a moment, Elena tried to decide if she should approach him to see if he was really asleep or if she should close the door again, and leave him until morning.

The decision was made for her when he said, “Is there a p-pr-problem?”

“How is your head?”

“F-fine,” he replied. “It hasn’t started bl-bleeding again, if th-that’s what you mean.”

None of the tension Elena felt when she woke up dissipated; instead it seemed to grow, the longer she stood in the doorway. She found herself feeling more and more uncomfortable. It was a relief to be able to look into her bedroom and find a tired man sitting on her cot with a blanket over his legs, rather than imagine his sharp blue eyes staring at her from behind his door, but she felt no calmer. It wasn’t his presence making her uncomfortable, but something was. Just because she could see no reason to be tense did not mean one wasn’t there.

“Is that all, then?” he asked.

“Were you injured in any other way?” she asked, for something to say.

“No. Surprisingly.”

“Okay. I’m glad.”

She watched him for a moment, waiting with her hand curled around the side of the door.

“You can come in, if you w-want,” the man said. “There’s n-no need to st-stand there, w-watching. Come in, close the door.”

Elena’s face tightened. “I’ll wait out here.”

“Are you s-sure?” he asked. “It is your room, anyway. And wouldn’t you f-f-feel better, n-n-knowing who’s watching you?”

She thought of the heaviness of the house, and the memory of his vicious blue eyes. “I said I’ll wait out here.”

“S-suit yourself,” he said. “Although it’s – it’s awfully _tense_ tonight, and d-dark. D-don’t you think?”

“I think you’ll find it often is, during a war.”

She swore she saw a flash of smile cross his face. Before he could speak again Elena quickly added, “You don’t need anything else?”

“I th-think I’ll be f-fine,” he said. “You’ve been a f-fantastic host, dear. You sh-should be proud.”

It fell on her like an insult.

“Thank you,” Elena said, anyway. “If you don’t need anything, I’ll be waiting out here.”

She closed the door behind her before he had the chance to say anything, and quickly ran back to the table. Her heart beat fast. Sitting at the table again, Elena couldn’t shake the pervading feeling of being watched, as though the man in her room could see through the door and was looking at her.

She promised herself that she would stay awake for the rest of the night, and was certain that she wouldn’t be able to sleep even if she wanted to, feeling like she did, but when the night turned into the next day, bringing the new year with it, the tension left her body and left her exhausted.

When she woke the next morning, the man was gone, and she could find no sign he had ever been there.


End file.
